Poems are much smaller than blogs and much more difficult to write.

I used to write quite a lot of them. I’m lazy now, too much instant gratification on Facebook, or perhaps I have simply lost the part of me that could write with precision and grace.

Tonight is March’s full moon. Tonight I am almost through a dark month, a month where I have questioned everything, where my thoughts went to other places even as the earth was waking from a long dark winter. “…sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness ..” Sometimes we forget this completely.

“…The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;”
– GALWAY KINNELL

 

I used to write about the moon, and my friend Marco wrote this for me (and you wonder why I keep coming back to Latino men, and Irishmen – see below). I read it when I want to remember things about myself I easily forget.

Laguna de Luna Llena

Suspiros soplan sobre la Luna
luminada laguna

-Luna llena-

-Luna lejos-

-Luna blanca-

-Luna sola-

Hablemos esta noche
De los secretos
Escritos en tu cara;
Las manchas del ayer
Que hoy
Unduladamente son reflectadas
En estas aguas

Cuántos golpes sufriste mi amor
Que todavia sigues luminando
Sobre tierra y nubes

Cuántos amores olbidos
Te han penetrado
Que todavia esperas otro.

Eres terreno sagrado
Donde se sacrifica lagrimas
Y sangre por probar
La vida concentrada;
La angustia deliciosa.

Tu me inspiras…
Tu me inspiras
A cruzar las aguas de la vida;
De la luna llena laguna,
Con suspiros
Y esperanzas
Por amor sincero.

Faith is complicated for me. Part of my proud, stubborn arrogant heritage perhaps, but I reflexively reject things I’m told I must believe. I reject black and white, good and evil as the only options. My world is many shades of grey. Still, I do have faith, somewhere, and it is as complicated and nuanced as the rest of me.

Faith

I want to write about faith,
 about the way the moon rises
  over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
 slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
  sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
 I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
 like a new moon, slender and barely open,
  be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

— David Whyte

 

I wrote this ten years ago, much has changed, but during dark times I get smaller, I sleep more or want to sleep more, and as always I cry in verse.

alive for one week

I am small

I wonder
hear my pulse
see broken glass
want only sleep

I am alive

pretend happiness
feel pain
touch deformity
worry in dreams

I cry in verse

curling within
understanding little
say less
I dream in reds

I try
I hope

I am alive.